Since the inception of the telephone, that invention and systems in which it is used have been virtually constantly improved. In its earliest days, the telephone was placed at so few locations that the person answering almost knew where a call was coming from before picking up the receiver. With the passage of decades, however, it has come to be that scarcely a home, apartment, or condominium does not have a telephone. In a residential setting, the telephone has certainly come to be a more than a "want". It is now a "need". Because of various factors such as the increased rate of crime and the high incidence of medical emergencies, it is almost imperative that each and every residence have the availability of a telephone.
The situation is even more acute in the business area. As commerce has evolved, more and more transactions are conducted by telephone as compared to a face-to-face manner. It is essential that, for a business to survive, it have telephone services. This is true even in the case of rural-type businesses.
In the relatively recent past, the United States has implemented a "9-1-1" emergency call system. Such systems intend to identify a particular location having initiated an emergency call. The intent is that, if the person initiating the call is emotionally agitated or unable to talk for a long period of time because, for example, of a spreading fire, and does not, as a result, identify the specific station from which he is calling, the public safety answering point (PSAP) to which the call has been routed will still be able to fully respond in an appropriate manner. That is, even if the caller has failed to identify the location from which he is calling, the PSAP should be able to respond with the appropriate police, fire, ambulance, or other type of response necessary.
A number of factors, however, exacerbate the successful operation of the emergency call network. First, because of the fact that, in many scenarios, identification of the calling station is tied to the telephone number, incorrect information can be provided to the PSAP. This is true because of the fluidity of location of both businesses and individuals. As a business, for example, moves, it might well retain its original base telephone number. This is particularly true if the distance moved is relatively small. Particular three-number designators of the seven-digit telephone numbers are typically assigned to particular geographic locations. If the move is within that geographic area, the original number can be retained, and, even when the move is outside the immediate geographic area, the number can still be retained if the move is within the same general locale.
Typically, a PSAP is provided with database information based upon telephone numbers. Consequently, while the database might have correctly identified the resident or business occupant initiating the call prior to a move, if a move has occurred, the appropriate emergency service might be routed to an incorrect location because of a delay in updating the database, for example. Such a consequence could result in the significant loss of property or even one or more deaths.
Further, even if no move has occurred with respect to a calling individual or business for a very long period of time, insufficient information might be available in a database so as to enable adequate routing of services. To illustrate, an emergency call for ambulance services is initiated from an office on the thirty-fourth floor of a high-rise office building in a large urban location. The call is initiated because an individual in the office has stopped breathing. The emergency occurs on a Saturday and only two persons are in the office at the time. One of the two has experienced the breathing difficulty and the second person is initiating the emergency call. While making the call for the ambulance services, the second person is also trying to restore breathing in the person experiencing the trauma.
The nature of the emergency is conveyed to the PSAP, and the caller has indicated the street address at which the office is located. Because of the need to get back to the person experiencing the trauma, the caller has failed to identify where in the high-rise building the person needing the emergency services is located. The PSAP routes ambulance services to the street address only, and the ambulance personnel find that the building is, in fact, a high-rise. By the time the individual is located, it might well be too late to administer efficacious services.
In view of this illustration, one can clearly see the need for the precise identification of the location from which a call is being initiated. The necessity to save lives makes such a need clearly apparent.
Other scenarios, in addition to an emergency "9-1-1" telephone call network, exist wherein it is necessary to identify the specific location from which a telephone call is being made. For example, such a need exists in the case of a roving security guard. A roving security guard, typically, is responsible for a number of geographically-dispersed stations. At each station, the guard has responsibility for personally insuring that certain conditions of security are met.
Such an arrangement can encourage fraudulent reporting on the part of the guard. For example, if ten locations around a large metropolitan area are the responsibility of the guard, he could visit only one or a small number of the total facilities for which he has a responsibility, and call into a central location to report that the required conditions of security are met when, in fact, many of the stations have not been visited. In a worst-case scenario, the guard might even make the calls purporting to be from the various locations, from his residence. Such conduct could be obviated if the central location to which calls were to be placed could definitively identify a call from a roving security guard as emanating from a station at which the security condition is to be checked.
It is to these dictates and problems of the prior art that the present invention is directed. It is an apparatus and method for definitively identifying a specific station initiating an incoming telephone call.